Rest assured: this is not an article written for an American newspaper with the intention of promoting feminism. As proof, all you need to do is to have a look at Rosa Bonheur’s sumptuous creations and hold your breath! How can an artist produce such astonishing works and then get totally forgotten?

Born in 1822 in southwestern France’s Bordeaux region, known for its excellent wines but also for its vast green pastures full of farm animals, Bonheur was encouraged by her father who had noticed her artistic tendencies at a very early age.

She would resist temptations to paint portraits or scenes of households with people sitting on sofas drinking coffee, chatting or having dinner next to grand fireplaces — a style that was in vogue in the 19th century. Instead, her magical world would have images of horses, cows, sheep and other farm animals.

An extraordinarily dynamic woman painter stunned the art world in the 19th century. Does she still have admirers of her art?

Bonheur repeatedly won prizes as a teenager in major art festivals of France. In 1848, at age 26, she was paid three thousand francs, a very high price in the mid-19th century, for her painting Ploughing in Nivernais Farm that can still be seen in the Musée d’Orsay of Paris.

International recognition came to Bonheur in 1853 when she made The Horse Fair in which the animals look alive and ready to jump out of the canvas any moment. Even rival art critics of the day agreed that the painting was “above and beyond all polemics over romantic or classical categories” that had remained the principal point of disagreement among them. The painting was sold at a mind-boggling price of 40,000 francs, unheard of at that time. The success brought international fame to Rosa Bonheur and the solicitations to visit many European countries would include a personal invitation by Queen Victoria of England. The stupendous chef d’oeuvre can be seen today at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

She also moved to Scotland where she drew sketches for many of her works including Highland Shepherd, finished in 1859, and A Scottish Raid soon after.

But the young artist’s fascination with international art exhibitions, grandiose accolades by critics and foreign travels would suddenly be over. In 1860, at age 38, she finally settled down in Thomery, a little village near the Fontainebleau forest, South-East of Paris.

Her furious engagement with her work and her refusal to have anything to do with the art world away from her village was so intense and combative that Empress Eugenie, wife of Emperor Napoleon III, had to go all the way in person to Thomery in 1864 to have the pleasure of meeting the artist.

Rosa Bonheur’s furious engagement with her work and her refusal to have anything to do with the art world away from her village was intense and combative.

Only a year later, the Empress would make a second visit to the village and personally confer the distinguished French gold medal of Légion d’Honneur to Rosa Bonheur who was later promoted as Officer of the Order in 1894, the first woman to receive the distinction.

She would make one more foreign trip to be present at the Chicago Universal Art Festival in 1893 before her death six years later, without being able to finish her last work, a huge canvas once more dedicated to a countryside scene.

Rosa Bonheur had the rare honour of having her biography published while she was still alive. She even had the privilege of going through and correcting the manuscript of Eugène de Mirecourt’s work Les Contemporains: Rosa Bonheur. Another book Rosa Bonheur: Her Life, Her Work was authored by an American artist Anna Klumpke who was her close friend.

However, Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur, edited by Theodore Stanton and published simul­taneously in London and New York in 1910, is considered to be the most authoritative work on the artist as it includes letters exchanged between Bonheur and her family and friends, and lends a greater insight into her life and her views on contemporary art techniques.

Today, apart from D’Orsay and MOMA, many other museums have Rosa Bonheur’s paintings. In Paris a street was named after her: Rue Rosa Bonheur can be visited any time in the 15th arrondissement of the French capital.

The writer is a Paris-based art critic. He can be reached at ZafMasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 28th, 2018